From New York to Nicosia

Expect occasional updates as I have time.

Please comment!

Project Salsa

Warning: this post is way off-topic, will only make sense if you played H-O-R-S-E as a kid, and, yes, I am making fun of myself.

Last Sunday, my father, Elena and I took a drive around the Limassol and Pissouri area. After losing about 11 gallons of water from walking around in the sun, we stop in at the vacation home of a family friend to rehydrate before going home. This was a classic nice Cypriot second home – the small vineyard, the vegetable garden, the swimming pool and the olive-trees and hills in the background.

And also a basketball hoop. And a basketball.

I am 33 years old, I am out of shape, I apparently have patellar tendinitis and am expressly banned from basketball right now, it is 175 degrees outside in the shade, and I am supposed to chit-chat with the adults. So of course, 10 minutes later I am challenging the grandson, Leonidas, to a game of H-O-R-S-E. What can I say?

Leo is 16 and plays in the German First Division. I have no idea what that means, but the kid was automatic at mid-range – I don’t think I saw him miss all day from 12 feet or less – and pretty damn good everywhere else. His friend and sister also want to play.

So, to recap, I am about to play H-O-R-S-E against two 16 year old boys and a 12 year old girl.

Game 1 is won by Leo, though there is a bit of confusion about the rules which leads to me and Leo shooting the same bank shot about 15 times in row until I missed it. Game 2, I am stuck behind Leo in the rotation which means I am wiped out of the game before he even has a letter.

My father has wandered off to car because he is ready to leave. B-ball friends of mine already know what comes next: “hey, Leo, how about one more game”.

This time I avoid Leo in the rotation so he quickly clears out his friend and sister and it is down to Leo and me, both with no letters. We trade “H”s after a few minutes, but I am in trouble. If we stick to mid-range jumpers, Leo is going to crush me. I am shooting my brains out and just holding even.

So I start encouraging Leo to do funkier stuff under the theory that I am at least as good at the funky stuff as he will be.

BAD IDEA.

Over the next 5 minutes I rack up an “O”, “R” and “S” as Leo throws down a ‘lefty’ jumper, a Kareem free-throw line hook shot and a 3 feet behind the backboard all net.

My last chance for redemption is not going well at all. it is H-O-R-S vs. H, I am one miss from elimination and Leo is channeling Steve Alford. I consider trashtalking but given the cheering section of his grandmother, his father, his mother and his baby sister, that seems out of bounds. So I gamble that I can lure him out of his range where my 60 extra pounds, some of which could be muscle, might help.

What follows is 30 minutes of some of the finest H-O-R-S-E Pissouri has seen this summer.

I am en fuego which I need to be to hold the line on the edge of survival against the Cypriot-German shooting robot. At one point, he makes me hit 3 in a row from the top of the key to stay alive. I claw back with instant vacation home classics – 18 footer baseline jumper angled behind the backboard on the side of the swimming pool, 16 footer on your toes with your heels hanging over the edge of the pool, 23 footer across the corner of pool.

Eventually we are tied at H-O-R-S, I am drenched with sweat, my father is tired of waiting and is clipping grapes from the vineyard and Leo hits a “toss the ball ahead of you and pick it up into a MJ fadeaway jumper.”

This is a problem. This shot involves actual jumping and the last time I did that in June my knee exploded in pain. So when faced with setting back my recovery 6 weeks or conceding H-O-R-S-E to a 16 year-old, I clearly make the smart choice. I toss the ball, jump and fade away, fall off-balance, crush and break the lightpost on the driveway and look up to see the shot go in. As I apologize to his grandmother, it crosses my mind that I ought to be past the phase in my life where I break peoples’ property during sports.

But my knee feels good and I still haven’t lost and so the high-stakes shooting goes on.

Finally, I hit the 24 foot off center jumper from outside the court on the stone walkway that I had been trying and missing all day. Leo rims it out and that’s it. (In fairness, that he nails that exact shot seconds later.)

So I thank Leo for the most fun hour of sports I’ve had in a while and for being totally unflappable and gracious. And his grandmother for not making me feel badly about breaking her house and for giving me ice cream. And his father for giving me a dry shirt to wear afterward.

And there is no way I am playing Leo when he is 17 and has another 2 feet of range because he will destroy me.

This is sheer genius.

Tip from Paul Kedrosky

This flash of the exotic (to Western eyes at least) caught my eye today. An often forgotten thing in Israel/Palestine is the small but historically very important Christian community.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has been there the longest and is regarded by the Orthodox as the mother church of all Christendom.

It runs the main Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as well as many of the holy sites in Jerusalem such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, sometimes in partnership with the Roman Catholic, Coptic and Armenian Orthodox churches.

Picture from the NY Times article on George Bush in the Middle East

Of course, centuries of co-habitation do not prevent the occasional dust-up (pun sortof intended)

From this Christmas:

Members of rival Christian orders have traded blows at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, with four people reported wounded in the fray.

Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic priests were sweeping up at the church following the Christmas rites of the Western churches earlier in the week.

Reports say some Orthodox faithful encroached on the Armenian section, prompting pitched battles with brooms.

From the BBC

For more remarkable examples see the Wikipedia article on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: bolding is mine.

Establishment of the status quo did not halt the violence, which continues to break out every so often even in modern times. On a hot summer day in 2002, the Coptic monk who is stationed on the roof to express Coptic claims to the Ethiopian territory there moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians, and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fracas.[3]

In another incident in 2004 during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured.[4]

Under the status quo, no part of what is designated as common territory may be so much as rearranged without consent from all communities. This often leads to the neglect of badly needed repairs when the communities cannot come to an agreement among themselves about the final shape of a project. Just such a disagreement has delayed the renovation of the edicule, where the need is now dire, but also where any change in the structure might result in a change to the status quo disagreeable to one or more of the communities.

A less grave sign of this state of affairs is located on a window ledge over the church’s entrance. Someone placed a wooden ladder there sometime before 1852, when the status quo defined both the doors and the window ledges as common ground. The ladder remains there to this day, in almost exactly the same position. It can be seen to occupy the ledge in century-old photographs and engravings.

None of the communities control the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned responsibility for it to two neighboring Muslim families. The Joudeh were entrusted with the key, and the Nusseibeh, who had been the custodians of the church since the days of Caliph Omar in 637, retained the position of keeping the door. This arrangement has persisted into modern times. Twice each day, a Joudeh family member brings the key to the door, which is locked and unlocked by a Nusseibeh.

So on Jan 1, 2008, Cyprus transitioned to the Euro, replacing the Cyprus Pound. It was very interesting for a geek like me to watch the transition which was incredibly smooth.

There has been dual euro-pound pricing for a year now and merchants will accept both currencies for the next month. Most impressive is all the behind the scenes work that has transitioned all payment systems to a new system (including dual pricing for some time). As far as I have seen, there has have been no hiccups.

I am usually unimpressed by governmental performance in Cyprus but this is a great triumph for the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank. They successfully protected the Cypriot pound (initially through currency restrictions) after the Turkish invasion in 1974, kept it strong for 3 decades, started loosening restrictions in the 1990s, locked with the Euro in the late 1990s and have been harmonizing fiscal and monetary policy since. Central Bank lending rates have been on a decade long decline and as of two days ago the last 50 basis points (4.5% v. 4.0%) vs the ECB went away.

The currency administrators deserve kudos for avoiding a devaluation along the way and transitioning Cyprus into the Euro where the currency’s fate is in larger and stronger hands. The current administration also deserves credit for managing inflation and even generating a fiscal surplus this year, something that other candidate members like Lithuania were not able to do and therefore missed the euro convergence date.

Finally, I watched a documentary on Cypriot coinage. As nostalgic as one might be for the 47 year Cypriot pound (it came into being after independence from the UK), it was the shortest-serving of the island’s currencies, that have include the British Pound, Ottoman, Roman, Hellenistic, Byzantine, local and other currencies. The record holder is the Byzantine currency which was in use for an astounding 700 years. I will be surprised if the euro lasts that long.

Sorry for the geek-out on this, but i found it to be fascinating.

and Happy New Year!

I found Kiva.org to be a strangely addictive way to do “charity”

1. It is microfinance lending so it is not “really” charity. Default rates are very low as with most of microfinance so you can recycle your money through to various people working on small businesses.

2. The immediacy of reading the micro business plans is pure honey to a business geek like me

3. The price points are low, starting at $25, so it you can experiment painlessly.

A few days ago, I apparently made a very minor contribution to capital improvements in a small cafe in Ukraine. The paragraph that clinched me is below – This would bring joy to even the most conservative banker’s heart.

Oksana has perfect credit history with Nadiya Ukraine. She has repaid ten different loans without any delinquencies. She is requesting a loan of $1000 to purchase some new equipment for her café. Oksana hopes that modern technologies will help her business operate more efficiently and generate additional profit as a result.

Ok, updates as I learn more about being a retail banker. Yet another organization that would not be possible without the web. We are at year 10 of a 30 year cycle in what a global communications platform is going to cause in terms of changes.

Sorry for the light (no!) posting recently. I have been on a wild amount of travel, first in Cyprus, then on a trip with some of our students to India and China.

More on that later, but suffice it to say that my travel itinerary the week I got back was the following:

Beijing -> Bangkok -> Amman -> (reroute due to flight delays) Beirut -> Larnaca -> Athens -> New York -> Chicago -> New York.

For those keeping score at home, that was 25 hours of flight time and 25 hours of transit time in 1 week.

So one of the things that I noticed in the Phillipines was just how upbeat and attitude-free a place it was.

This incredible video is a group of prisoners putting on “Thriller” in the prison yard. Imagine this in, say, Rikers Island.

Update: Embedding has been disabled. Please go to Youtube to see directly

And for reference, the original, ground-breaking Thriller music video itself

Keep your arteries clean with olive oil.

TopGear, the well-known UK car show, takes the Veyron up to 250MPH.

Awe-inspiring

While I hate to overlap 3x in one day with Dealbook, this is too priceless to miss

See video here

This does not make one long for corporate america

Alain Robert climbs tall office buildings with his bare hands, no hooks, no suction cups, no ropes, etc.

It seems like utter madness – “you slip, you die.”

Also, he suffers from vertigo.

His site has pictures of his rock climbing and building climbing.

This is of course totally irrelevant to anything except my brain breaks at the level of concentration (or insanity) needed to climb the outside of 70 story buildings with your bare hands.

In 1974, Wilber Mills was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

His companion (not his wife) fell into the Potomac one night.

What proceeds has to be one of the funniest, driest (front-page) Washington Post articles I have ever read

Link here

Bruce Reed at Slate with the tip.

Happy New Year!

Lots to say, but little time.

In the meantime, a quick tidbit from the Associated Press

Full Article here

In their New Year’s poll, among other unremarkable facts (e.g., 80% of people believe the minimum wage will be raised in 2007), this tidbit is buried:

25% of people expect the Second Coming of Jesus Christ…in 2007.

This is a higher percentage than I expected.

Now, in the same poll, 35% predict cancer will be cured in 2007 and 70% predict a major national disaster in the US in 2007, so I think we are looking at the tendency of people to overestimate the likelihood of rare events (and risks in particular) and underestimate the risk of more common events. One of these polls should ask the following two questions:

1. How likely is it that I will die in a natural disaster this year

2. How likely is it that I will die in a car accident this year

I am sure the former will be viewed as more likely though it is at least 2 if not 3 orders of magnitude less likely…

but there is no need to be morbid in the beginning of the new year!

Best wishes to everyone, may our minimum wages all be raised, cancer be cured and if your personal savior comes this year, so much the better!

I WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR!

Sorry to be back with such a frivolous post, but I can’t get this out of mind. From cnn.com

BEIJING, China (AP) — The long arms of the world’s tallest man reached in and saved two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs, state media and an aquarium official said Thursday.

…

Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins’ stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, the China Daily newspaper reported.

Veterinarians then decided to ask for help from Bao Xishun, a 7-feet-9 herdsman from Inner Mongolia with 41.7-inch arms, state media said.

I just can’t get my head around how this all worked. You are working on saving a dolphin, your surgical instruments aren’t perfect, so you think: “I know, let’s call the tallest man in the world to help out”? It sounds straight out of a comic strip…